Still sticking to my New Years goal of cooking dinner twice a week! Since this was something I started just before the end of 2010, I was already in the habit of doing this, so really I have just stuck with it.

Last week I made 2 great dinners. One was definitely from scratch while the other was a box mix that my mom sent me from Trader Joe’s. Let’s start with the entirely homemade soup I made. I found the recipe in one of the cookbooks Ryan bought me for Hanukkah. There are so many good vegetarian recipes out there and just not enough time to try them all.

This soup is a saffron corn chowder. I liked this recipe because it was practically fat free with the use of fat free milk as the base. Flour was used to thicken it up, and you could hardly tell it was not made with all the fat. I also liked how many different veggies this recipe called for, and the use of both fresh and frozen. I am a big fan of frozen because they are always available when I need them and they aren’t going to go bad because they were pushed to the back of the fridge and I forgot about them.

I started off by chopping the pepper and mushrooms. I love mushrooms so I added in a few more than the recipe called for.

Since this was a saffron soup, I had to crush up my saffron.

The frozen veggies used for this soup were lima beans and corn. A little while back I made a pita pocket sandwich that called for frozen corn and at that time I thought to myself why I never thought to use frozen corn before. Canned corn can lead to a major sodium build up in the diet, and I know it is a popular canned item. I guess I never realized corn came frozen. Oh well, I have discovered this now, and frozen corn over canned is the way to go for me in recipes from now on.

The onions, mushrooms and pepper went in first.

After a few minutes cooking in oil, I added 2 TBSP of flour before adding the fat free milk and some veggie broth. The last step was to add the saffron and some black pepper.

I decided to serve the soup with some rolls I picked up from the commissary.

In this picture you can see the yellow hue from the saffron a little better. I must say this soup was a huge hit and I will be making it again. This was ready in under 20 minutes, which was great.

The next meal I made was using this Trader Joe’s soba noodle kit. I happen to have plain soba noodles around, but my mom thought this was cute. I liked that the prepackaged kit came with suggestions for how to add to the noodles and make it more of a meal.

Obviously there is a lot of sodium in here. I could just tell by the seasoning packet.

To bulk up my dish I added some frozen veggies-the stir fry mix, to keep with the Asian theme.

I will say that this was super easy to cook.

All I had to do was cook the noodles, add water to the powdered sauce packet and then mix them up. Oh, and add my veggies. I tossed it all together and we were ready to enjoy.

What was nice about both meals was that we had leftovers for multiple meals. Most of the time I do that intentionally so we have lunch, but it also has a little to do with the recipes, which are designed to make at least 4 servings.

QUESTIONS: Do you like soba noodles? What is your favorite type of chowder?